In a complaint filed with the National Institutes of Health, White Coat Waste has accused Dr. Nicole Kleinstreuer, the agency’s Deputy Director and overseer of its massive animal testing portfolio, of spreading outright lies about the agency’s funding of experiments on dogs and cats.
The filing demands corrections to Kleinstreuer’s false claims that these grants “predate” her tenure and that NIH is legally “constrained” to keep funding them, when in reality, millions in new and extended grants for painful, lethal tests on beagles and kittens have been approved under her leadership.
The complaint stems from Kleinstreuer’s appearance on an official NIH video podcast last July, where she tried to dodge criticism from WCW and animal lovers by insisting, “I understand that there’s part of the extramural portfolio that exists, that predates [us]. We are constrained under the law to leave those existing grants in place for now…. But to phase them out, we are working tirelessly behind the scenes.” She even claimed NIH was creating an “action plan to phase those out as quickly as possible under the law.”
However, WCW’s detailed analysis of NIH records paints a very different picture.
Far from being relics of Fauci’s past, these experiments have been actively funded and expanded during Kleinstreuer’s watch, which began in April of last year.
According to the complaint:
- NIH has greenlit over 30 new grants potentially involving dog experiments, totaling around $40 million. One egregious example: a nearly $3 million grant to a pharma company for lethal tests on 68 beagles, force-fed an implant for opioid treatment (Grant No. UG3DA062511).
- More than 45 existing grants for dog tests have been extended, with over $170 million awarded overall and at least $6 million in fresh funding. This includes over $900,000 in new money to Tufts University for force-feeding beagles diet pills mimicking gastric bypass (Grant No. R44DK141341).
- At least 3 new cat grants worth $1.1 million, including a University of Minnesota project where up to 60 kittens endure skull drilling, virus injections, induced strokes, paralysis, and death – with $486,100 doled out in August 2025 and more to come through 2030 (Grant No. R01NS140244).
- Over 10 extended cat grants totaling more than $45 million, with at least $533,961 new for spinal cord injuries and treadmill torture on cats (Grant No. R01NS110550).
These aren’t holdovers; they’re affirmative decisions by Kleinstreuer and her team to pump taxpayer dollars into what she herself called “unethical,” “misleading,” and “resource-intensive” animal models that “hold back progress in human health.”
WCW argues that this directly contradicts her podcast spin, violating federal information quality laws that require government officials to be accurate and objective.
Hellbound and Down 